We need to pursue all available options simultaneously to effectively combat climate change. This includes:
Reducing reliance on carbon-based energy to lower emissions.
Implementing carbon capture and long-term storage solutions to remove excess CO₂ from the atmosphere.Planting trees is nice and should be done but isn’t a solution for drawdown
We have a worked example for geologically stable carbon sequestration without any novel chemical bonding, and that's storing carbon in compounds that are mostly unhydrogenated carbon by mass, deep underground:
Charcoal. If you aim to sequester carbon without some kind of reactant (and most reactants are incredibly energy intensive to make & stage, burning more CO2 than captured), you have to effectively make charcoal. Growing a forest, pyrolyzing it, and burying the charcoal, is the inverse process of coal mining, and is the default comparator on cost, effort, and materials for any sort of carbon sequestration scheme.
lol, all available options as long as we don't actually look at the root cause and just throw more money and tech at it in the hope it automagically stops
hint: infinite growth in a finite system doesn't work
PS: and if you care about results, we've been exploring every solution for quite some time now, you know after all our leaders get together in Paris or other fancy place and talk about clean solutions. Well we've been release more CO2 every year. The only time it dipped was during covid when ... you guessed it ... we had negative growth, aka degrowth. We never had so much sustainable energy production but we also never produced so much co2 and pollution
> (2) the large majority (almost 90%) of studies are opinions rather than analysis;
> (3) few studies use quantitative or qualitative data, and even fewer ones use formal modelling;
> (4) the first and second type tend to include small samples or focus on non-representative cases;
> (5) most studies offer ad hoc and subjective policy advice, lacking policy evaluation and integration with insights from the literature on environmental/climate policies;
> (6) of the few studies on public support, a majority concludes that degrowth strategies and policies are socially-politically infeasible;
Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180092...
It's literally the only mathematically viable option. Either you choose it and plan for it or you hit the wall and deal with the consequences. Just take a gpd per capita world map, superimpose it over a pollution per capita world map, and extrapole the impact of china+india+africa living like the average american or even the average european, it just doesn't work out, but it's coming very soon
Degrowth is also stopping to eat tomatoes in the middle of January instead of importing them from the other side of the world, or not eating fucking salmon when you live in South Africa, or not using a 3000kg car to move you 80kg ass around the street to go shopping. Or things like not living in the desert and relying on AC and artificial rain to keep you alive because you would physically die if you were to experience the outside world for more than an hour
Yeah, like we used to pray our gods for more rain, it certainly doesn't hurt, proving it is useful is much more difficult though.
We focus on co2 because it's the only thing we can pretend to be able to tackle a little bit while ignoring the rest like ocean acidification, massive global collapse of wildlife, including insects, rainwater being unsafe to drink pretty much everywhere in the world, micro plastics polluting the entire planet and virtually every single living organism, PFAs, increase in chances of world wide simultaneous crop failure, &c.
99% of what we're doing is green washing or wishful thinking (or sinking, when it comes to co2), the truth is that we won't be able to sustain the western lifestyle much longer, especially not when China, India, and Africa are coming for their slice of the cake
If you think 3000kg EVs transporting 80kg of meat and niche carbon sinking tech will save us I have a bridge to sell you.
[1] 2.05 mmol/g at half capacity equals 45 mg/g per cycle, and ignoring heating and cooling times one can fit 27,976.6 cycles into a year. Overall that is 1.262 kg/g/y.
And that's if:
- the study can be replicated
- the study wasn't altered to boost publishing metrics
Remember super conductivity at room temperature from a few months back ?
According to their calculations, they're getting 1-2mmol/g adsorption. That means 44-88g of CO2 captured per kilogram of adsorbent.
It's not clear that this particular chemical is subject to a patent application, but they have applied for a patent on the entire class of chemicals: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20220370981A1
I'm conflicted about this. while I'm skeptical about most patents this is exactly the kind of invention that patents are supposed to incentivise, and this guy obviously deserves a reward if his invention, like, literally saves the world. But - reading between the lines, while it's effective, it sounds like it's not yet cost effective. And making something cost effective is exactly the kind of thing that patents that restrict development to a single lab (which is what a class patent will do) will cause problems with.
Probably the best answer would be for someone rich to buy him out and licence it for free.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/10/23/capturing-carbon-from-t...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal%E2%80%93organic_framew...
All they need to do their work is corporations leaving them alone.
Else it is an open cycle where co2 in == co2 out
And the remaining biomass (leaves, bark, etc.) is fine to compost and re-enter the carbon cycle.
Also it's clearly not an open cycle, not in temperate climates. The accumulation of carbon in top soils etc. is one of the things that kept CO2 in balance for millions of years prior to us pulling it out of the ground. Peat bogs being another key one.
Yes, it can't keep up with us. But it's not an open cycle. (It is in the tropics, though)
Would love to see huge fields of them grown, then harvested, and the product turned to lumber and other longer-term carbon storage. Even composted or biocharred and the carbon amended into top soils (yes it won't stay there forever, but...) Assuming the process can be done without emitting more CO2 than is captured.
It's the same reason biofuels cannot be a general replacement for fossil fuels.
Growing trees is nice for other reasons, of course, and some limited CO2 capture would come along for the ride. This would not eliminate the desirability of other kinds of CO2 capture.
A solar farm doesn't need to be weeded, ploughed, planted, weeded again, topped, and harvested every year like corn does. You also don't need to ferment it to ethanol then burn it at a 70% loss to power a set of wheels.
Possible also that the vegetation growing between and under the panels sequesters carbon.
I wouldn't say biofuels are a dead technology, but they are niche. They may be useful in a post-fossil fuel age for things that are very difficult to electrify, like long distance air travel and production of organic chemical feedstocks.
If you do the math the only sensible solution is hardcore degrowth starting yesterday.
If rapid degrowth could be enforced, so could switching to sustainable technologies, which do exist and could be employed.
The level of degrowth needed to avoid warming from fossil fuel use would be extreme, if it's the only knob turned. Even a 90% reduction in the rate of fossil fuel extraction and use would not avoid eventual massive global warming. Degrowth would simply delay that outcome.